6 May 2021

The Three ‘Paid Search’ Questions to ask in May

2021 is speeding ahead, so we thought it was time to look back and see what we might have missed when it comes to paid search. Google is almost always updating and changing things, so what are the hidden secrets that just might have slipped under your radar? 

Question 1 – Did you know you can pay for your Ads with Paypal?

Business Credit cards and accounts can be an expensive minefield to navigate, especially for small to medium business owners. Any little trick, tip or shortcut can save you time, which ultimately can save you money and one of those tips is that you can pay for your Google Ads with Paypal. At first glance, this might not seem like much, but there are some potentially huge advantages:

• Paypal can be linked to a credit card and a bank account, so will automatically switch over rather than have to be separately updated.
• Paypal can be set up to send notifications when it sends money, so you can customise alerts on your phone and email.
• Paypal’s interface is more user friendly than some banking apps and websites, with better than average customer support for businesses.

Question 2 – Did you know about Predefined Reports?

Reporting in Google Ads has always been a sticking point. The main interface is good for editing and making changes,(most of the time), but terribly terribly slow when it comes to just showing you what is going on. Help is just two or three clicks away. At the top of the Google Ads Interface is REPORTS. Here you will find the ‘Predefined Reports’, that breakdown into subcategories and over 100 ready reports.

This has almost everything you could want from a report interface:

• It’s quick, responding straight away rather than the main interfaces lag.
• It’s customisable, with every metric as a column you can add – or see which other metric it is incompatible with.
• It’s fully filterable, with the same date options as the main interface.

You can even email the finished report to you or someone else with a schedule. The only things the reports don’t support is exporting the report to Google Sheets, (which seems like an odd oversight) and making the report into something you could then show a board of directors – for that you’ll need Google Data Studio.

Question 3 – Did you know location reporting has changed?

Not every update in Google Ads is for the better. Sometimes they alter one thing, and the knock on effect is not so helpful. This is sometimes the case with Locations. As the privacy rules and laws have expanded, so user anonymity has increased. Now it is important to know if you are showing your adverts to people in your targeted regions or you are targeting people in AND interested in your targeted regions. In some cases this will result in your advert being shown across the world, when they might not be relevant. 

While you can still see which website visitors are from which region in Google Analytics, this data isn’t reported in Google Ads. If your products and services are very region specific, it is worth going to each Campaign and checking. It’s not even easy to find…

Select the campaign, then. Settings > Locations > Location Options

To see and change this setting, it has to be set on every individual campaign.